him. The old lad can be as steady as-as, no matter what,' he added, looking at me, 'I won't say bad words before ladies; but if Fitzhenry squeezes one rupee out of him, I don't stand here.' "I was agitated all this time with rage against Stephen, and should probably have broken out, had he not, after having given us this renewed specimen of his brutality, crept out again to his place of observation in the verandah. My anger, however, which was on the point of bursting on Stephen, now broke out on Lizzy, and I remarked that I wondered how she could sit quietly, and hear her brother speak so unfeelingly of her sister's husband, and so disrespectfully of her father. "It was one of the peculiarities of this young woman, that she never, on any occasion, indulged any expression of irritated feeling in the presence of her equals. How she acted with her inferiors I never asked, but with me she ever preserved a cold, unmoved manner, which occasioned me to detest her more than I should otherwise have done; for I had no degree of charity towards her, and, indeed, never wished to have any. In answer to my accusation, she replied in her usual indifferent manner, that she had no influence over her brother, and that he must do what he pleased. I probably might have added more, had not the voices in the next room suddenly become louder, Stephen at the same time re-appearing. Tis as I thought, Milbourne,' said the young man, "tis about the government-money; and if Fitzhenry can't raise the sum, he will be dished, and that in a few hours. But the old boy is firm; he stands his ground to a miracle.' "The contention within now became fiercer, and I heard my uncle say, 'I am not to be frightened, Sir;' and I begged Mr. Milbourne to interfere. "Put your pistols down, Sir,' said my uncle; don't play off these things on me.' "Mr. Fitzhenry's voice was heard in reply, but he spoke thickly, and we could not distinguish what he said. My uncle answered again, and then both spoke together; and there was a sound as of a scuffle. Mr. Milbourne and Stephen ran to the door which was used as a communication to this room, and I, in my agitation, followed, The door was fastened within; and, as they were trying to burst it open, we heard the report of a pistol, followed by a heavy groan and the sound of some great weight falling on the floor: at the same moment the door gave way, and, by the light of the lamp upon the table, I saw my uncle standing upright, but of a ghastly paleness, and the unfortunate Fitzhenry struggling on the floor. "Never, never shall I forget that awful moment, nor that inundation of thought, which bore me, in an instant, through every scene in which I had, during my early residence in India, been in the company of the miserable man whose dying struggles I then beheld. "Years have passed since then, but they have only left fainter impressions on my mind than that one terrific moment. "Mr. Milbourne and Stephen rushed into the room the moment the door gave way, and I was following them, when I felt myself seized by some one, and turning, half fainting, half frantic, to ascertain by whom I was thus held, I found myself in the arms of Frederick Fairlie, who forced me from the scene of horror, and delivered me to my own servants, who bearing me to my tent, I was so happy as to lose all recollection, for a time, in a long fainting-fit. "It was long after midnight when Mr. Milbourne came to me. I asked him no questions, and there was no need, for I knew that he would have told me had poor Mr. Fitzhenry still lived; he would have had pleasure in so doing; but he had no communication of this kind to make; and when he suggested to me that it would be best for us to return home, I fully understood that the event, with regard to Mr. Fitzhenry, was fatal. "Such is the expedition with which things of this kind are managed in India, that we were in our pinnace, and had already lost sight of the conka rock, on which my uncle's house stood, before seven o'clock the next morning; and having moved to that distance which wholly changed the scene, halted for the day, at the foot of a flight of stone steps, on the summit of which was a large Brahminee fig-tree, and an old pagoda, in order to give the remainder of our servants, whom we had left behind us to bring away our baggage and to prepare provision, sufficient time to join us. "Never shall I forget that long sad day which we spent -never shall I forget my bitter reflections at that period. How did my thoughts attach themselves to what I fancied was passing at Bauglepore! and when Mr. Milbourne, towards evening, slipped away, and was absent for a few hours, I too well knew the reason of this absence, and my imagination faithfully presented the whole scene of the funeral of the unhappy self-destroyer. "Thus ended this miserable visit to Bauglepore; and thus closed the life of the unhappy man to whom I had once so fondly attached myself. Here, indeed, were many thorns, but the roses, where were they? Yet there were mercies for me hid beneath these frowning providences. I, however, realized them not at that time; I saw only the horrors which surrounded me; and, refusing to draw the moral from these events, I sunk into a state of deep dejection, from which I did not recover for many months. "I asked no questions respecting what had passed, during the day, at Bauglepore, when Mr. Milbourne returned; nor, indeed, did I ever ask where, and in what way, poor Fitzhenry had been buried, or what impression his death had made. "Our progress to our station was slow, and I received every indulgence from Mr. Milbourne, who certainly rendered himself every day more worthy of my affection, though I did not yield him the return he deserved. "I took little delight in the splendours of my situation when I arrived again at my own house; and, as I before said, remained in a very low and distressing state for some months; during which period, I had, at times, strong impressions of the importance of religion, though I did not disclose the fact even to my husband. At the end of about ten months after my return from my miserable visit to Bauglepore, I was considerably relieved in my spirits, and an entire new turn given to my thoughts, by the birth of a son. Ah! my little Henry! my dear boy! how does memory cling to thee, my child, my lovely one! But I will not anticipate the sad end of my baby. Thy little tale, sad at least to thy mother, though joyful to thee, must in its course too soon be told. "O, what a ferment did I excite on the joyful occasion of the birth of my son! to what expense did I go for lace, and corals, and rows of pearls, to put round his neck! with what a number of attendants did I provide him! My melancholy thoughts were now all fled, or if they sometimes returned for a moment, the smiles of my boy presently banished them. With my gaiety of heart, I again assumed my supercilious airs and love of pomp; and it was about this time that, having some very valuable seeds and plants sent me from China and the Indian Archipelago, I was determined to possess a real, not a figurative, garden of perfumes; and accordingly caused a finely situated piece of ground, in a sheltered situation, at no great distance from our house, to be encompassed with a square puckah wall, in which I assembled all that I could command of the rare and exquisite in the vegetable kingdom. The necessity of having a wall round my garden as a defence from wild animals, and the still more mischievous inhabitants of the neighbouring bazar, somewhat, indeed, troubled me, because it compelled me to exclude from my garden a view of the fine forest and mountain scenery which the situation afforded. It was, however, some consolation to find that, when the wall was built, some of the higher points of the hills were still visible above it, richly decorated with their thickets of latamer, their fan-like palms, their wide-spreading figtrees, the tamarind, the pepul, and cotton trees, with a thousand others of which I never even took the trouble to learn the names. To hide the wall, and decorate the fore-ground, was, therefore, all I had to do; and this was soon accomplished by the means of the magnolia, the loquot, the campion, with its silver bells, and a variety of those innumerable beautiful plants with which the tropical regions so generally abound. It was no difficult matter to procure water for my garden from a neighbouring stream on the hills, and from several wells which we caused to be dug; and when the whole ground was laid out by my directions, and all the beautiful flowers were arranged in their due order, the whole was completed by a small pavilion, or dome, which was erected in the cen tre of the square; and which, being open on all sides, Prosperity was not good for me; and it was necessary, in order to my salvation, that I should find thorns among my roses, or that I should be appointed to suffer temporary afflictions, that I might be delivered from greater evils. But my reader may perhaps wish to know something of what was. passing at Bauglepore all this time. "I had frequent letters from Euphemia, all of which were of a melancholy cast. Her father she described as being much in the state in which I had seen him during the first day of my visit at Bauglepore, though he seldom referred to any afflictive circumstances. Julia, she informed me, had put on mourning for her husband, but had shown few other tokens of sorrow; she had returned to her father's immediately on her becoming a widow; but, soon afterwards going down to Calcutta, had there married an old surgeon, who had nothing whatever to recommend him but his rupees, and she was living with him in considerable style near the Lal bazar. Of her brothers, Euphemia said little in any of her letters. Celia she mentioned as living in some of the wild regions near the Sunderbunds, having a rapidly increasing family, and a husband who, depending only on some indigo plantations, was sometimes supposed to be worth money, and sometimes not to be in possession of a single pice. Lizzy and Lucretia, she observed, were still at home; but as she never said more than this respecting them, I supposed that she had nothing very agreeable to make known. 66 Respecting her own family, she spoke of her little Lucy as being a very delicate child, that she trembled |